ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

My first week at my new job, my boss announced that we were going to vote on our holiday outing.  Apparently every year the seven-person finance department has an outing to someplace in the area.  Apparently one year Southwest had a special on Chicago flights and “in the area” was extended.  Anyway, we were given a selection of options to vote for, such as the Steamboat Arabia, museums, a play, etc. etc. and told to turn in the slips.  It was determined that we would see a play at Crown Center the second week of December.  But it turned out the play was booked, so my boss briefly consulted everyone and we ended up booking for a play called “The Happy Elf”.

The Happy Elf turned out to be a children’s Christmas musical.  But that is fine.  Most people watch the Rudolph claymation special every year and it is OK because at Christmas time it’s all right to be a little childish.  Like much entertainment geared toward children, it was also unspeakably strange in some respects.  The Happy Elf turned out to be a noxiously exuberant guy whose enthusiasm for his work hampered his ability to actually perform it.  Because this caused some interpersonal conflicts with his immediate supervisor, the supervising elf complained to Santa, played by a portly black man, and the Happy Elf was reassigned to the “naughty & nice” department.  Apropos of nothing, I noticed partway through the first musical number that the Happy Elf was wearing Vans.

Between the opening scene and the reassignment scene, it was revealed that the Happy Elf was involved in a love/friendship triangle a la Dawson’s Creek.  I hope I won’t be spoiling things too much when I say that he was the Pacey and the other guy elf was the Dawson.  A friendship song was performed even though it was obvious that the Dawson elf was pining for the Joey elf, who in turn thought the Happy Elf was where it’s at.  Anyway, so the Happy Elf did not like working paperwork in the naughty/nice department, but he did notice that there was an entire town comprised of all naughty people and decided to investigate.  At this point, his love interest Joey elf arrived and reminded him that Santa did not permit tampering with naughty and nice statistics.

The Happy Elf visited the town, called Bluesville, and ran into some angry people carrying foil tanning reflectors around.  The major, played by Santa but wearing a zoot suit, Stevie Wonder glasses, and a big sash that said “MAYOR”,  arrived and performed a musical number about how Bluesville done got the blues and its wumman lef it and so on.  Sort of.  The mayor explained that their town’s problem was that it was located in a valley so deep that the sun could only reach it for 60 seconds each day.  Oh, and the town’s other problem was that its only employer was a “What” factory where question marks of every typeface were manufactured, including “Helvetica, Times New Roman, and Wing Dings”.  The Happy Elf resolved to fix all of this and make the town’s residents happy so that everyone would stop being naughty.

Surprisingly, his plan did not involve gifting everyone with Cymbalta prescriptions.  He met a naughty girl and boy in the town and learned about a secret society consisting of the town’s only two happy people.  If this sounds like a friendlier version of the Bolshevik revolution, just wait.  He had just convinced the girl to take him to la revolución when he was suddenly caught and whisked back to the workshop.  His hat (apparently the source of his magical teleportation powers) was confiscated by Santa, who sadly shook his head as he lamented the fact that the Happy Elf could not follow the only damn rule in the whole workshop.  The Happy Elf was pretty depressed and he went back to the naughty/nice department.

Then the love interest elf found him and gave him her hat so he could go save the town of Bluesville from its seasonal affective disorder.  He went back and plotted with the boy and girl.  They recalibrated something at the factory and then the Happy Elf began working on a secret endeavor of his own devising.  Meanwhile, the third elf in the love triangle grew so jealous that he snitched on the Happy Elf, who was subsequently apprehended by an agent representing the department of “Gnomeland Security”.

The Happy Elf and his girlfriend were both stripped of their hats and assigned to litter detail, which they worked at forlornly until the third elf came to confess and apologize.  They forgave him and convinced him to return to Bluesville and make sure the plans went off as designed.

In the end, the sun rose and the town was filled with blinding sunlight.  It was revealed that the Happy Elf had polished the cliffs surrounding the town so thoroughly that the sun was reflected into the valley in some semblance of a normal diurnal cycle.  While the townsfolk marveled and magically stopped being naughty, Santa arrived with the Happy Elf and his girlfriend, who had apparently been exonerated despite their recent punishment, although this was never specifically discussed.  Santa gave a brief speech about how it is better to be nice than naughty, and the play was over.

Afterward, we went to eat at Milano and we all had a nice conversation and my boss let us all go home early even though it was only 2:30.  My boss is a nice lady.

Discussion Questions:

• Does thirty minutes of niceness at the end of the Christmas fiscal year counter the 50,370 minutes of naughtiness from the rest of the year?  Is this practice ethical, or should Santa pro-rate gifting based on cumulative evaluation of relative niceness or naughtiness?
• Why did the Happy Elf wear skater shoes?
• Does too much happiness diminish workplace productivity?
• What is Santa’s forseeable liability as a principal with respect to the town of Bluesville, in consideration of the fact that the Happy Elf acted as an unauthorized agent of niceness on his behalf?